“We left Warrington at 5.15am this morning to get here,” Emma tells me, standing in a queue that stretches down Walton Street. It is just after 9am on a Saturday in Oxford, the students are still in bed and the tourists have yet to descend on the city, but this corner of Jericho is already buzzing.
It’s a queue for a new bookshop. That’s a good thing right?
Oxford is rarely short of literary pilgrims. Every year, visitors flock to the colleges and libraries that shaped writers including JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and Iris Murdoch. But this crowd is here for something a little different. Instead of queueing for the Bodleian, they’re swapping recommendations for dragon riders and faerie kingdoms.
Oh dear.
The bright pink doors they’re waiting outside belong to Bad Girl Books, the UK’s first romantasy bookshop. The subgenre, blending fantasy and romance, has gone from niche online obsession to one of publishing’s biggest commercial success stories.
Yes my Kindle offers are usually stuffed with these, poorly written barely illiterate smut, but dragons are popular now so slapping a dragon on everything ensures it sells.
Readers are immersing themselves in sprawling fantasy worlds of “enemies-to-lovers” storylines, where “fated mates” discover they were destined for each other all along, and brooding “shadow daddies” – dark, morally ambiguous male protagonists with supernatural powers – inspire devoted online fandoms.
Well, I have a taste for Laurel K Hamilton myself, but that tends to be rather better written than most of these. But at least it’s getting people reading.
“Last year I read about 100 romantasy books, and I’ve already read 60 this year,” says 22-year-old Izzy, who has been waiting in the queue with her friend since 7.30am. “I used to hate reading when I was in school, but then I discovered romantasy, and realised that there is a whole world of books out there that I really enjoy. It’s an escape from reality.”
And that's got to be a good thing, right?
Inside, shelves are divided into categories including “Monster Smut”, “Unhinged” and “LGBTQ+”. T-shirts and caps proclaim “I Heart Fictional Men” and “Dibs on the Villain”; tote bags read: “I Like My Books Like I Like My Margaritas – Spicy”, and “My Favourite Colour Is Morally Grey.”
Oh, well, maybe not!
The problem seems to be that any genre that becomes popular attracts a lot of very average writers trying to jump on the gravy train. Now I enjoy a well written romantasy/fantasy crime book myself but I have a rule of thumb (rarely overturned) against reading any fiction involving dragons, time travel, or King Arthur. Your mileage may vary.
ReplyDeleteSo you think Rosemary Sutcliffe (Sword at Sunset) and Mary Stewart (Crystal Cave and sequels) are rubbish?
ReplyDeleteOK I get that you find this stuff tasteless and you don't like it. Other people enjoy it, what harm are they doing to you with their questionable literary taste?
ReplyDeleteStonyground.
"barely illiterate" ???
ReplyDeleteIt’s going to get a lot worse as AI really gets in on the act: “Write me a slash ‘enemies-to-lovers’ fantasy novel with a dragon, two rival mages and a twist at the end”.
ReplyDeleteDJ has it right (although I’m personally happy to ride much further down the dragons/time travel/King Arthur route); an excellent novel in any popular genre will inevitably spawn a host of poor imitations. For me, a book has to ‘taste’ right - an unquantifiable bouquet of good grammar, a setting and characters I want to spend time with, an enjoyable plot and, ideally, a soupçon of dry wit; sadly a generation reared on television, not literature, and taking their book recommendations from TikTok will probably have lower standards.
So, it seems that women have moved on from monster porn, or is that 'romantasy' stories in another name? Not so. long ago, it was "50 Shades.." type novels, where women would fantasize of being treated in a way they would scream blue murder if actually treated that way. From experience, I know that men have enjoyed novels about anti-heroes, or bad lads becoming good (Star Wars Han Solo, being an example), so we can't really complain, though personally found Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams preferable. So read on ladies, but remember they are works of fiction, just like politicians manifestos.
ReplyDeletePenseivat
The first few Anita Blake books were readable, with a genuine interesting approach to urban fantasy. Then they got mired in clothing fetishes and were-sex.
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